For the love of food!

Harney & Sons #2

Since I visited Harney & Sons two years ago with my sister (you can read about it here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/harney-sons/), I have become a big fan of this place and their tea. It is a good place to get some tasty teas for us, and also gifts for others.

They had the window decorated with fun Summer carnival theme, with blow-up balloons and Ferris wheel. How cute! Those colorful balloon gorillas seem like they are enjoying the teas from Harney & Sons.

The interior remains unchanged since 2015, still really nice, open space. With very high ceiling and large floor without too much things on it, the space feels even bigger. It has so many selections of great varieties of teas, it is fun to look around the store.

They have an interesting map of “Master Tea Blenders” of the world, and yes, Japan definitely made it on to their list.

The great thing about this place is that they have a small lounge space where you can enjoy their teas and also some sweets as well. We decided to have some tea and sweets before we shop.

They don’t have many seating, around seven or eight tables, but that is really enough for a tea shop. And since it only offers sweets and light snacks that are mostly pre-made, the turnaround is not too bad.

We order their Small Pot of Tea ($6) which is indicated as “2 servings” but it has a bit more than 2 servings in my opinion. They have a great selection of teas of all kinds. We went with Winter White Earl Grey from their “Flavored White Teas” section. It combines beautiful Chinese Mutan White tea with natural lemony Bergamot. Since we love Bergamot, and I like white tea, so it was perfect.The staff asked if we wanted honey or sugar, and I asked for both. Why not? So it came with a cup of honey and some cubed brown sugar. I got to enjoy the tea with both flavors.

For sweets, most of the items are brought in from local shops, which I always thought was pretty awesome. All of the scones are made at Harney & Sons, baked daily. On this day, I wanted shortbread cookies, but they were out of them… So, we went with their Summer Special item, Cherry Scones ($7), served with cherry preserves and Devonshire cream.

Warm, fluffy and moist scones came to our table, and it had nice aroma to it. We really liked the light texture, and the chunks of cherry in it. The cherry preserves and cream went perfect with the scone. It was pretty darn tasty. The butter knife had the same design as the tea spoons, like a little twig, but golden. I just love the way they look!

And if you are wondering what other sweets they have, here are a couple of examples. Miniature cakes from Minnie’s Bakeshop ($4/each), and French Macarons from MacarOn Café ($3/each). They looked pretty and really tasty… I would need to go back to try them! Although, I am very familiar with MacarOn Café, as they are one of my favorite macaron shop in the city (you can read about them here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/macaron-cafe/ and http://www.foodlovergirl.com/macaron-cafe-2/ ).

Our bill came with a couple of Gavottes Chocolate Crepe Dentelle Cookies, how nice! And they have a cute little sign as you are leaving the lounge area, saying “have a TEArrific day!”

Oh, and the lounge do have a bathroom at the back, which is great. There is one gender-neutral bathroom, and is a good size. The wall is a deep wine/maroon color, extension of the lounge and the shop. It had interesting paintings on the wall. Three mystical monkeys depicting “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” The bathroom was clean and well stocked.

Once we were finished with little R&R, we looked around the shop. They do have so many cute items there! They have all sorts of items that are of course related to tea, and some other items that are not really related to tea. Regardless, they are all interesting and adorable.

For example, look at these mugs with an animal attached to it. And if you look inside, there is a little surprise on the bottom of the mug. The one with a cat on it has a fish on the bottom, or the one with a dog has a bone on the bottom. Cute!

And yes, they do have crazy amount of tea selections. The staffs who works there have very good knowledge of their teas, and you can ask questions and/or recommendation from them. And if you are still not sure if you want to commit to the particular tea flavor, you can always get a sample size. This pouch would give you around three to five cups, depends on the tea, and of course, depends on your preference of how strong you like your tea. And here is a secret – the best way to get these sample is through Yelp. Use the Yelp app and check in at Harney & Sons for a FREE sample of tea of your choice! I don’t know how long they are going to have this offer, so make sure to check it on the app first. Since we really liked the Winter White Earl Grey that we just had, we got one bag of that. We also got a tea called “SoHo” since we are in SoHo, and the tea sounded really good. The story has it that the SoHo store celebrated its fifth year in 2015. The shop’s host, Emeric Harney created this tea blend to celebrate the anniversary. Pretty cool… SoHo Blend is a flavored black tea with chocolate, coconut, vanilla, and amaranth petals. How can we say no to that???

We had another fun visit here at Harney & Sons. We don’t always have tea at their lounge when we visit, but it is a great spot to relax with nice tea and sweets. We bough several tins of teas on this day for gifts. Everyone loves getting these teas… It is good to spread the joy of yummy tea!